


All the Colors of the Rainbow

by chaineddove



Series: As Heard in Bars [2]
Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Crack, F/F, F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-27
Updated: 2012-03-27
Packaged: 2017-11-02 14:14:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/369884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaineddove/pseuds/chaineddove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Do you want to guess what color my underclothes are again? "<br/>"Oh, yes, that's much more fun."</i>
</p>
<p>After a disastrous round of strip-diamondback, Isabela is determined, and everyone gets in on the fun, whether they like it or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the Colors of the Rainbow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Snarkoleptic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snarkoleptic/gifts).



> The second of the three "Bars" fics I owe, and quite posibly my crackiest Dragon Age effort so far. Hawke and Isabela shamelessly hit on Fenris. Everyone else gets involved (even Bethany gets a mail-in ballot, so to speak). Fenris can only take so much.

“The dog is cheating,” Fenris says flatly; if looks could kill, the Mabari would at the very least be wounded. But then, it does rather seem that Hawke’s dog has all of the acumen at cards that his owner appears distinctly to lack; though to be fair, Hawke doesn’t seem the least bit concerned with the fact that she is down to a translucent shift and a scarlet garter, at which Fenris is quite pointedly not looking.

“Would he do that?” Hawke asks, giving her best pout and ruffling the dog’s fur. The mongrel doesn’t even have the good grace to blink.

“Yes,” says every person at the table; Varric adds, “But he does it so well, I can’t find it in my heart to blame him.”

“Ante up, or strip down,” Isabela orders, her eyes avaricious. He’s very carefully not looking at her, either; her tunic is in place, but the laces are coming undone – _to keep Hawke company_ , she said, but really, he’s pretty sure it’s a diversionary tactic. It doesn’t work on Varric; nothing at all works on the dog. Hawke is losing gleefully, and he is coming to suspect that all of this is possibly for his benefit.

“ _Well?_ ” says Hawke.

“I am not drunk enough for this,” he grumbles.

This is how Fenris loses his pants.

“… _Pink?_ ”

_This_ is how Fenris loses his dignity.

***

When Isabela is still bringing it up two weeks later, Fenris sincerely wishes for a plague, or a war, or really anything at all that would draw her attention elsewhere. He has since taken the time and money to visit a respectable tailor, but the damage has been done; he swears that this, too, he shall take out of Danarius in blood as soon as he can get his hands on him. Fenris is notoriously lazy when it comes to housekeeping, or shopping for that matter; it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, really, that he’s been wearing whatever he found lying around the half-wrecked mansion he’s been squatting in, but somehow, Isabela’s merriment knows no bounds, and Hawke is only egging her on.

“Are they mauve today?” Isabela asks.

“No,” Fenris says, as calmly as he can. “They are _not_ mauve.”

“Chartreuse,” Hawke suggests.

“Periwinkle,” Isabela adds.

“Fuchsia,” Hawke exclaims triumphantly, not to be undone.

“ _Please_ ,” Anders says, covering his face with his hand, “for the love of whatever you two hold holy, _stop_. There are certain things I never, _ever_ needed to imagine.”

This is possibly the first and last time in Fenris’ life that he so vehemently agrees with the apostate on anything. It is practically a red-letter day. He thinks fleetingly that someone should mark it on a calendar somewhere.

“No,” Fenris says instead of voicing the thought. “Aren’t you tired of this yet?”

“No,” the women tell him in unison.

He sighs. When a dagger flies past him, he dodges it almost instinctively; Anders looks positively relieved as he says, “Oh look, Hawke, someone is trying to kill us again.”

Fenris is not a deeply religious man, but he feels like he might be willing to offer up a sincere and heartfelt gratitude to _something_ as he draws his sword.

***

“Maybe they’ve got pictures,” Merrill suggests, tapping her finger against her chin, eyes wide and incongruously innocent. “Of griffons. Baby griffons.” What Fenris has come to that even a blood mage is slaughtering his dignity is fearful to contemplate.

“Oh, _griffons_ ,” Isabela purrs. Somehow, she manages to make the word sound positively dirty.

“Is there anything you _don’t_ find arousing?” Fenris says, giving Isabela an exasperated look. “One has to wonder.”

“I’ll let you know,” Isabela replies, utterly unabashed.

“’Griffon’ is not a color,” he points out.

“Maybe they’re purple griffons,” Merrill suggests immediately.

Hawke sweeps her up in a spin; Merril squeals and giggles; Fenris sighs.

“So,” Isabela says with a smirk, “I think you are protesting rather too much, this time.”

“No,” he says, with all of the poise he can muster. “No purple griffons.”

***

“I wrote Bethany to see if she might have a guess,” Isabela says as they make their way through yet another dark alleyway.

“I wish you wouldn’t corrupt my sister,” Hawke says with a sigh.

“Listen to Hawke,” Sebastian says with a shake of the head, “for once, she is speaking sense.”

“Your opinion,” Isabela says primly, “doesn’t count, because you aren’t any fun at all.”

Sebastian’s voice is very calm as he begins, “Mistress Bethany is far too pure – not to mention too sensible – to engage in – ”

“She said red,” Isabela interrupts. “Red satin.”

Sebastian loses his train of thought. For a moment, Fenris finds himself with a most unexpected feeling – the desire to laugh. Hawke giggles.

“What _have_ they been teaching her at the Circle?” she muses.

“Say,” Isabela says, turning to Sebastian, who is, appropriately, scarlet. “Do Chantry types wear undergarments at all? I’ve always wondered, ever since that delightful initiate I met in Val Royeaux.”

“That is none of your concern,” Sebastian says primly.

“You poor thing,” Isabela drawls. “No wonder he’s so uptight, Hawke; all that shiny armor must chafe something awful.”

“Now there’s a mental image you don’t see every day,” Hawke says bemusedly.

“I’m sure you’d look stunning in red satin,” Isabela says generously to the men. “Both of you.”

“No,” says Fenris. “I’m sure I wouldn’t.”

The Prince of Starkhaven looks straight ahead and says nothing at all.

***

“What about you, Big Girl?”

“What _about_ me?” Aveline says suspiciously.

“You’ve had a fair amount of exposure lately,” Isabela continues, blithely ignoring the suspicion and layering on her particular brand of charm. “To men’s undergarments, I mean.”

“So help me, whore – ” Aveline growls.

Isabela interrupts with, “What does Donnic prefer? I’d have pegged him for a plain linen man myself, but you never know who might have untapped depths.”

Aveline sighs a long-suffering sigh and says, “I am not answering this.”

“Oh, come on, Lady Man Hands,” Isabela teases merrily. “Surely you’ve seen his at _least_ once.”

Aveline is silent for a long while, though it is obvious that being the recipient of Isabela’s undivided attention is discomfiting to her. Finally, she sighs again, and says very calmly, “Black and blue – ”

“ _Oh?_ ” Isabela says, eagerly.

“ – Are the colors _you_ will be shortly, if you don’t. Shut. _Up_.”

Fenris chuckles; Isabela pouts; Hawke says, “You walked right into that one, you know.”

“Oh well,” Isabela says with a fatalistic roll of her eyes, “it is for a higher cause.” She then gives Fenris an expectant look.

“Is that your final guess?” he asks with one sardonically raised eyebrow.

“Black _or_ blue?” she ventures, looking hopeful. Hawke turns to him, too, and flutters her lashes. Their behavior is, he thinks, appalling enough that it really should be a crime. Come to think of it, he is fairly sure it _is_ a crime against at least four tenets of the Qun. Hawke bites her lip, and he revises that to five.

“No,” he says. “I’m afraid you’re wrong again.”

***

“I believe _you_ are cheating,” Hawke tells him, scrutinizing his stoic expression as she considers which card to play.

“You do realize I am losing,” he feels the need to point out; even Hawke still has her jacket, and Isabela, as always, is untouchable. At cards, at any rate.

“That isn’t what she meant,” Isabela says, pulling from the deck and fanning herself with her cards. It is a tell; either she is cheating, or she is so sure of winning that she doesn’t feel the need to bother. “We have tried all the colors of the rainbow at this point. Some of them twice. Not to mention the griffons – which, for the record, I was rather fond of. We have to have been right at _least_ once.”

“Maybe you’re not asking the right questions,” he suggests. Every man has his limits, and he is not the most patient man in Thedas. Over the course of the last month he has traversed a journey from irate to resigned to amused. Now, he thinks, they have no choice but to pay for their persistent folly. Seeing the expectant way they look at him, though, he can’t help but think that he’ll be the one paying, in the end, one way or another. “ _Maybe_ ,” he says, with his very best bored expression, “I’m not wearing any.”

Hawke lets out a choked giggle; Isabela’s eyes burn. “ _Re-eally_ ,” she draws out, resting her elbows on the table.

“I suppose you will have to win and see,” he tells her.

“Now _that_ sounds like a challenge I can get behind,” Hawke says.

Fenris feels a slow smile growing on his face as he discards the only good card in his hand. “All in.”


End file.
